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The Economy

The boot is what COOTUS and his Commie/Cronies brought to town in 2008. You wanted it, you got it.

With today’s dismal economic news, maybe some of the idiots in the general voting population may wake up. Maybe.

COOTUS tried his plan and it worked. Unfortunately his plan is to collapse the economy under the weight of crippling debt and the welfare state, bringing about a transformed, “new” America, as envisioned by his Commie mentors.

Testy tyrant President Oblameless got to give a dress rehearsal of his The American President speech this afternoon in the Rose Garden.Â It’s not the first time we’ve seen it.Â After wiping his ass on the Constitution in front of the White House Stenography Pool, one brave reporter had the temerity to ask him a question in a stunning breach of lickspittle subservience etiquette that was adopted and strictly enforced immediately following the Peeved Prez’s Immaculation.

Apparently asking a question is now considered “heckling”.Â It’s also very unpatriotic to yell out a question to the President before he can make his patented Coward’s Exit after announcing the abdication of his responsibility to protect this country in order to make a desperate election year pander to Hispanics or something.

Spitting in the faces of millions of unemployed Americans?Â Ok.

Spitting in the faces of those all of the world taking the legal path to citizenship?Â Ok.

Laying out the welcome mat for every Mexican felon to get a fresh start in the U.S. if they can get here in the next four months?Â Ok.

But asking a question while Oblah,blah filibusters his own press conference before dashing away from the cameras is what’s unpatriotic.

â€¢
came to the United States under the age of sixteen;
â€¢
has continuously resided in the United States for a least five years preceding the date of this memorandum and is present in the United States on the date ofthis memorandum;
â€¢
is currently in school, has graduated from high school, has obtained a general education development certificate, or is an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces ofthe United States;
â€¢
has not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise poses a threat to national security or public safety; and
â€¢
is not above the age of thirty.

Umm, how do you know the age of someone when they are – by definition – undocumented?

We’re going to profileÂ and discriminate against them by age.Â Is that correct?

How do you know someone came before the age of 16 when there is no record?Â You don’t.

What’s a successful student?Â One who attends.

What stops any 30 year old in Mexico from running across the border tonight and claiming they’ve been here for the last five years or since they were a child?Â Nothing at all.

The fact that they may not have been convicted in the U.S. doesn’t erase their criminal history in their native country.Â The rapist, the murderer, the cartel member. If I ran a Mexican prison I would load every felon and insane crazy person on a bus and drop them off on the border tonight like a modern day Mariel Boatlift.

Granting Amnesty is “fair and right” but the discretionary enforcement by ICE and Homeland Security will be used to prosecute older illegals because of their age?Â I’m sorry but I just don’t buy that particular line of bullshit.

This is Amnesty for everyone in this country regardless of whether they are from Mexico, Yemen or China.Â Plain and simple.Â Get here, shit out a kid and sign up for your free Obamacare Medical Card and map to the welfare office.Â Followed shortly by your union card and directions to the voting booth.

You’re an American college student paying an exorbitant out-of-state tuition?Â Tough shit, home slice.Â That illegal alien is now going to get a cheaper college education than you.

You’ve been on unemployment for two years because you can’t find a job?Â Congratulations.Â I’d like to introduce you toÂ 800,000 several million of your new competitors.

This is the death of Democracy.Â When the will of the people is thwarted by a President who knows he is going to lose so he pours gas on whatever fire is in front of him.

Thank you Daily Caller for doing what every other news organization in this country is failing to do.Â Thank you for coming down on Obama harder than Romney is going to do along with his VP Marco “Jose Biden” Rubio.

Our only hope at this point is for Congress to request a special review by the Supreme Court and for the southern Governors bordering Mexico to shoot or arrest everyone entering their state by illegal means for the next 5 months.

Unfortunately for us all, too many Republicans just breathed a sigh of relief that Obama did in an afternoon what they’ve been afraid to do for years.

EXIT QUESTION:Â Isn’t it just another great coincidence, not unlike the Washington Post running their “Romney bullies homos from 50 years ago at the same time Obama evolves on gay marriage”, that Time Magazine’s cover story yesterday is about a bunch of illegal aliens standing up and saying that they are not afraid of being deported.

No collusion at all from The White House and the media.Â Just another coincidence I’m sure!

Prior to this week, I was hoping that common sense would prevail (obviously I was living in dreamy-dreamland) in the debt debate and that something like the original Cut, Cap and Balance would be passed and we could get on the road to semi-recovery.

I should have known that even a milquetoast approach such as this would be too much for the Dims and the GOP corruptocrats to swallow. Now these egg-sucking dogs have spent the week since fighting over two plans that are complete crap and cut nothing.

Even so, the deal under discussion offers wins for both sides. Republicans and their tea party supporters would get spending cuts at least as large as the amount the debt ceiling would grow and avoid any tax increases. For President Barack Obama and Democrats, there would be no renewed battle over extending the borrowing limit until after next year’s elections.

Under the possible compromise, the debt limit would rise by an initial $1 trillion.

Their goal? To make it through the next election so the theft can continue. It doesn’t really matter, they’re not going to do enough to avoid the downgrade anyway, which may be just as bad as a default.

“We’ve looked at what happens if the funding totally gets cut off, if they shut down, and we’re actually in pretty good shape with how our payment flow works,” Haslam said. “But it obviously impacts the credit ratings and funding that comes from Washington.”

Emkes said “we can go beyond six weeks” in keeping the state’s fiscal house in order even with an impasse in Washington.

But Haslam said there would be “major problems” if an impasse continues for a longer term.

“If there’s not an agreement during that period of time, I think the world explodes,” Emkes said.

So you’ve got a few weeks still to stock up on those critical items – food, water, supplies and most importantly, ammo. This is also a disturbing reminder about how dependent we are on the Feds for 44% of our budget. That, in itself, is nauseating.

According to McNally, 44 percent of the state’s current year budget relies on federal funding, or $14 billion of the overall $30.8 billion. Approximately 92 percent of federal funding is contained in only seven departments, with the majority going to TennCare at 44 percent, Human Services at 19.6 percent and Education at 14 percent.

The federal money, passing through the state budget, goes to hospitals, nursing homes, schools, unemployment benefits and multiple other purposes.

Until the corruptocrats in D.C. start listening to Sens. Coburn, Demint and Paul, we’re going down the toilet for good. For a country that has allowed this to go on for decades (and even worse, would elect a street-trash community-organizing nothing like Obama), we may damn well deserve it.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will demand a seat in the table for the final talks on the national debt limit, putting a strong liberal voice in the room.

Pelosi and House Democrats were left out of the negotiations between President Obama and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last year that extended nearly all of the Bush tax rates though 2012.

But now sheâ€™s demanding her say at a time when many of her House Democratic colleagues are disappointed in Obamaâ€™s level of consultation with their caucus.

I’m sorry.Â I thought the point of budget negotiations was to actually accomplish something.Â Not to interject “a strong liberal voice” to ensure nothing gets done.

These protestations from the Iron Bitch who locked Republicans out of all discussions during her Reign of Error, capped off with a stroll across the capitol with a super-sized gavel while she laughed and laughed, is so rich that it deserves a tax cut.Â “A strong liberal voice”, Alzheimer’s what’s the difference?

Here you go, Ma’am.Â I found a chair that’s just about your speed.Â Try not to bang it too loudly.

Code Pink approved

Now I realize that picture is a bit insensitive and probably violating ADA standards given Great-Grandmother Pelosivic’s disabilities.Â Should budget negotiations drag on too long, we can make accommodations so that she can still participate without sacrificing her dignity.

Flexing her muscle, Pelosi asked for and got a meeting with Obama on Thursday morning to discuss the next phase in the negotiations.

At her age, she shouldn’t be flexing so much though I do concede that she knows how to make a stink if she doesn’t get her way.

Oh wait, I forget. When the Dim-O-Cracks say “new tone”, that should be translated as conservatives bringing their own lube and bending over more politely so the Dims don’t have to put forth so much effort when fiscally raping the country. There’s just nothing sadder than a socialist not getting his/her way.

Mayhem engulfed the state capitol following the vote. Thousands of protesters streamed into the four wings of the historic white-granite building, screaming at the GOP lawmakers, who were quickly escorted out by police. College students from the University of Wisconsinâ€™s Madison campus mingled with union leaders, teachers raised fists with progressive organizers. Cries of â€œShame!â€ echoed throughout the marble halls.

Senate Republicans were harried by swarming crowds. â€œWe tried to get out of the building after the vote, because they were rushing the chamber, and we were escorted by security through a tunnel system to another building. But, after being tipped off by a Democrat, they mobbed the exit at that building, and were literally trying to break the windows of the cars we were in as we were driving away,â€ Republican senator Randy Hopper tells NRO. Such tactics, he sighs, were hardly unexpected. â€œI got a phone call yesterday saying that we should be executed. Iâ€™ve had messages saying that they want to beat me with a billy club.â€

Of course, that’s never where it stops with the community-organizer-in-chief’s little thugs and thugettes. They have now gotten together (more than likely with Bracky’s co-biographer, Bill Ayers) and have penned a group death threat against the GOP Senators who dared to find a way to uphold the rule of law in Wisconsin. The criminally insane authors of this screed should be locked up and given life in prison.

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes
will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain
to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it
will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit
that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for
more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in
the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me
have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that
support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing
with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand
for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many
others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.
We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a
nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave
it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the
message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are
now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a
demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed
in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.
This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t
tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are
not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided
to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s
necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making
them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families
and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please
understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked
everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel
that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives
of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and
say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

I really don’t care if this is some kind of joke from some nameless, illiterate product of the Wisconsin public schools, it should be treated with great seriousness. It certainly would be if these threats were made against a bunch of Dims.

Pencil-necked Twerp / Chicom Houseboy to Americans: You Haven't Begun To Suffer Enough For Us To Care

Because $4.00 a gallon isn’t that big of a deal and partly because so many people are out of work that they don’t notice since their 2 years worth of unemployment checks keeps the Netflix account current:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told lawmakers Thursday that the U.S. and other nations are prepared to tap back-up oil reserves if Libya unrest continues and severely disrupts oil supplies.

…

“It’s important to note that there is considerable spare oil production capacity globally, and we and other major economies possess substantial strategic reserves of oil,” he said in prepared remarks. “If necessary, those reserves could be mobilized to help mitigate the effect of a severe, sustained supply disruption.”

The Treasury secretary reassured lawmakers that underlying inflation remains low nationwide. And he said the U.S. has “considerable spare oil production capacity” it could consider tapping in the event of a “major” supply disruption.

In other words, nevermind that iceberg – FULL SPEED AHEAD! Let’s not break-up OPEC now while they are weak.

Tell us, oh wise, pencil-necked twerp – what constitutes a state of emergency?Â Five dollar a gallon gas?Â Six?Â Ten?Â We should wait until the problem has exploded in our monthly credit card statements before we address it.

Can anyone recall an economic boom or recessionary recovery period being helped by sky high energy costs?

When asked how long Americans can expect prolonged oil price hikes and whether longer-term hikes would slow economic growth, Geithner said that was “not something we can know for certain today.”

“Most investors regard this as a temporary increase and expect prices to come down gradually over the rest of this year,” he said. “That would give us more confidence, if that was right, that it will have modest effects on growth and inflation.”

Bill Clinton these guys ain’t.Â He felt your pain too much.Â These guys?Â Not a bit.Â Cold and sterile to the 800 lb. gorilla that robs the pockets of the working poor on a daily basis.

Don’t worry about it though.Â We’re only projected to have 1.2 million home foreclosures this year so it’s not like you would have spent that extra money you saved on something more important – like making your mortgage payment.

Besides, if things keep going the way they are you’ll be able to take that high speed train to the unemployment office.

Clayton Cramer has an interesting contrarian notion over at PJM challenging longheld assumptions about crime being related to unemployment rates and how we’ve got it all terribly wrong:

Crime and unemployment: everyone knows that they go together. Right? Unemployed people, desperate for enough money to pay their bills, buy groceries, and get medical care (since those heartless Republicans think â€œdonâ€™t get sickâ€ is a health care plan), must turn to crime. At the very least, disheartened men sitting at home are going to lose their tempers, get into fights, and shoot their spouses.

Like most conventional wisdom among the elites, it turns out not to be true.

Mr. Cramer proceeds with several charts showing the declining crime rate in several violent categories which I’m not disputing.Â What I contend is that what he’s calling a lack of correlation is based on a lack of causation.Â Which may be lulling him into a false sense of security about his fellow man.Â Something that’s not taken into account here is how the availability of easy revolving credit can effect these numbers.

Word on the street is that billions of your dollars have gone into propping up financial institutions so they could keep lending so business could keep humming so the economy wouldn’t fall off the precipice.

Kicking off an all-day conference at the Federal Reserve on the financing needs of small businesses, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that some businesses in good standing have had difficulty obtaining the credit they need to expand or, in some cases, to even stay afloat.

So, where is the money going? Good question. Being a third rate blogger who is confused by numbers but excited by anecdotes, I would like to put forward a theory. They are using the generous slathering of no-strings-attached money poured upon them under the watchful gaze of “Sheriff Joe” to expand.

Let’s take a quick tour around my neighborhood.

The dots in blue are the existing banks, the red ones are under construction as I type this.

The last bank to be built in the area. Nice, shiny and redundant

A grove of trees last week. Today home to a brand-new bank 600 yards south of #1.

Here’s the bank that prompted this little photo-essay. Jack the kindly old man who ran the local landscape nursery for 25 plus years sold his land for one-point-something million to the bank thereby giving himself a nice retirement and his neighbors a good shaft.

Remember when you were eight hours late on your credit card payment and the faceless, impersonal d-bag at the faceless, impersonal “too big to fail” bank jacked your rate to 29.99%? Well your late fee enabled Bank of America to open this gem right here. Thank you!

And to round off our little tour, meet the bank across the street from B of A. Because, let’s face it, if you overshoot your bank by 20 feet, you might as well open up a new account

The guy who spends his whole life thinking about how to screw people in the ass has a plan to stop the ebbs and flows of the global market with some prescription-strength Astroglide applied liberally.Â Yea, yea, yea.Â A hammer sees every problem as a nail.

Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) said that a bank tax and other tough new measures would be introduced by the individual countries, but in a coordinated way to prevent bankers from moving from one place to another to escape regulation.

“Lenin might have been able to put socialism in one country, but tough bank regulation in one country ain’t going to happen because we will lose people,” said Frank, who heads the House Financial Services Committee, a key spot for any American decisions.

But don’t call them Bolsheviks.Â It’s like poison complaining about a skull and crossbones on it’s warning label.

Shorter Frank:Â Wenin put sociawism in one country but what we need is a Gwobal Weninist so that the sands of other people’s money won’t swip through our fingers.

You have the head of the House Financial Services Committee arguing in favor of Global Leninism.

Tom Donohue, head of the US Chamber of Commerce, has some strong words for the leftards trying to ramrod envirowhacko legislation up our already unemployed asses:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue says a campaign by the White House and its allies to undermine his $200-million-a-year association has largely failed â€” and actually has helped raise even more money for its pro-business efforts.

In a 75-minute interview with POLITICO, Donohue dismissed recent defections by Apple and at least four other companies, which quit over the Chamberâ€™s opposition to Democratic climate change legislation â€” as essentially meaningless. â€œMembers come and go all the damn time,â€ he said.

Thatâ€™s true. But rarely â€” if ever â€” have companies jumped ship in such a public way.

Donohue made plain he believes the White House, or at least its closest allies operating on the outside, are behind a very orchestrated campaign to embarrass and undermine the Chamber.

…

Under pressure from MoveOn.org and other groups, Apple, PG&E and Exelon have left the Chamber over the issue â€” and Nike resigned from its spot on the board. And pressure on others to follow suit is often intense.

Donohue refused to say if he believes the science behind global warming. â€œIs the science right? Is science not right? I donâ€™t know,â€ he said.

What he does know, though, is that heâ€™ll fight anything that the Chamber believes would unfairly harm business, especially if the Environmental Protection Agency moves forward, while Congress haggles, with its authority to regulate the release of greenhouse gases.

â€œIf we got the EPA one, then we are in deep sh– as a country,â€ he said. â€œYou want to see unemployment? You will see some.â€

This, of course, is working under the assumption that the current administration does not want high unemployment so that the government can simply buy all of tomorrow’s unemployed votes with a handout and using the EPA to create just the kind of crisis they have the solution for.

Yes, for the few of you who have been asking, I’m still alive and kicking. Real life has just been busier than usual so bloggery falls down to about 9th or 10th on the priority list from its usual 5th or 6th slot. Luckily you have the lovely Michele, the brilliant BMac, the hard-to-find Cranky, the occasional Nigel, the once-a-year Tiny, and the quarterly Yiddish to get you through.

I have not, however, been out of touch with what’s going on with the demise of our once-great nation. Just to prove that I’m keeping up, I’ll be throwing out the occasional link-dump so that you read what I’m reading.

Here’s a look at what my RSS feeds have fed me while I’ve been away.

On Obamacare, anyone with a lick of sense knows that the idiotic rambling coming from the Obamabots and HHS Head Kathy “Late-Term-Abortion” Sebelius was a crock of shit. They threw out their new Axelrod-Focus-Group terminology of “co-ops” instead of “single-payer option” which was already code for “government controlled socialized medicine”. It’s all the same crap – they’re just trying to change the language so that you might be bamboozled into getting on board. Don’t buy it.

One can hardly deny that Palin’s reference to “death panels” was inflammatory. But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting. Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post’s Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic–acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus’s case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.

If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama’s critics, in contrast with Palin’s, do not deny the president’s intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.

How did she manage to best him in the debate? Because he’s an intellectual lightweight who can’t string two sentences together without his teleprompter and she’s chock-full of common sense. It’s pretty simple.

Conservatives need to understand that these people are liars, theives and socialists. They’ll fight as dirty as they need to to acheive their goals. It’s time we quit acting like a bunch of pussies and get in the game.

The only reason we have any “resemblance” of a functioning credit system at all at the present time is that the government and Fed are pumping upwards of $250 billion dollars a quarter – that is, $1 trillion a year – into the system to subsidize bad credit risks and keep those who have been and are getting screwed by these frauds – so long as they’re other banks and businesses – from having to bear the cost of these acts.

Instead of locking up the bank robbers (who wear a $3,000 suit instead of a kevlar vest and a gun) we are covering their theft with taxpayer money.

Instead of removing the embezzlement from the system and forcing fraud into the open, we are sweeping it under the rug.

Instead of demanding that people do business honestly and punishing those that refuse, we are allowing them $100 million dollar bonuses – after they run the price of your Granny’s Heating Oil up once again.

The FDIC is out of money, which may explain why the second-largest bank in Texas, Guaranty Bank, has not yet been shut down. Late last month, Guaranty reported to the SEC that it is “critically under-capitalized” and that “it is probable… it will not be able to continue as a going concern.”

Sounds like a problem, yet the FDIC hasn’t shuttered it and the 150 other banks like Guaranty — because it just doesn’t have the money. Even with the one-time surcharge funds arriving on 9/30, Martenson anticipates that bonus will only last the FDIC another two or three months.

Even more troubling: banks’ assets, as distressed as they are, have been dramatically inflated by “mark-to-fantasy” accounting wizardry. That means the FDIC’s real losses will be larger in real life than they appear in the rear-view mirror. Furthermore, the much smaller S&L crisis that began in 1980 took eight years to peak and another four years to completely unwind.

There is a bright side to all this doom and gloom. Americans are waking up to the fact that Obama is an empty suit and a socialist puppet, whose strings are being pulled by Rahm Emanuel, George Soros, David Axelrod and our First Lady, Thunderthighs. His approval ratings are going through the floor.

WASHINGTON (AAAP) – The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today’s bleak landscape.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the updateâ€”usually scheduled for mid-Julyâ€”has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town Aug. 7 on its summer recess.

The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance.

Reporting from Washington — As the watchdog of the government’s massive bailout of the financial sector, Neil M. Barofsky had a simple question: What had the nation’s banks done with all their bailout money?

Can’t be answered, said the Treasury Department, because of the way banks move money internally. The department declined to put the question to the banks.

And so Barofsky started asking financial institutions himself, getting answers from more than 300 that had received federal bailout money and learning to what extent they had used the money to increase their lending, buy competitors or build their cash reserves.

The banking survey, and the refusal of Treasury officials to conduct it themselves, were revealed as Barofsky issued a stinging report Monday that complained of a lack of transparency in the Obama administration’s management of the giant financial services bailout program.

The report came as critics of the administration said that the White House has fallen short of its promises to run a more open government. Among other areas, the critics cite the president’s conduct of the healthcare debate, which has included closed-door White House meetings with powerful interest groups.

“You can’t ask the basic questions or have a debate about the fundamental policy questions without information,” Barofsky said in an interview.

Here, CNBC attacks Barofsky for daring to question the all-powerful wisdom of the Fed and its White House Crime Family overlords.

Why would Mr. Barofsky tell the truth? Because that’s his job, damnit! His position exists to bring transparency to this process, rather than keep stuffing it all under the carpet and hoping that nobody notices that there is an elephant-sized lump in the middle of the floor!

The STOOGES on CNBC have made clear their intent this morning and left NOTHING to the imagination. Facts ARE CNBC, whether you like them or not, and this sort of blatantly-transparent attempt to cover up the facts and truth by smearing Barofsky is an outrage.

This table is on page 134 of the report – the entire report should be required reading for every American, so you can see exactly what sort of outright lying and financial fraud you’re being forced to support, despite your expressed opposition in September and October by a ratio of 100 to 300:1 as expressed by calls to Congress prior to the passage of the EESA/TARP.

If you can come to any conclusion other than the fact that this entire fiasco has been anything more than a blatant attempt to force the taxpayer to eat trillions of dollars of losses incurred due to imprudent and even fraudulent practices on Wall Street, you’ve got a VERY active imagination.

We are being raped, folks, pure and simple. The elitists at the Fed, in the White House, in Congress and on Wall Street are watching their empire go up in flames, and they’re giving it to the middle class one last time. Long and hard.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote Friday on a sprawling climate-change bill, signaling the Democratic leadership’s confidence that it can overcome objections from Farm Belt Democrats.

Opponents and supporters of landmark climate legislation are ramping up their public-relations campaigns ahead of the planned vote. The Obama administration is pushing the measure as a job-creator, while critics, including many Republicans, are portraying the bill as an energy tax that could slow the economy.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said in an email late Monday evening: “There are some issues still under discussion, but we are confident we can resolve them by the time the bill goes to the floor on Friday.”

The bill aims to cap greenhouse-gas emissions at 17% of 2005 levels by 2020 and at roughly 80% by 2050, creating a market for companies to buy and sell the right to emit carbon dioxide and other gases. It also mandates a new renewable electricity standard and establishes new national building codes.

It would mark the first time that either of the two chambers of Congress have voted to impose mandatory reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions — a goal President Barack Obama wants to achieve before a round of international climate talks in December in Copenhagen.

Mr. Obama on Tuesday said the House climate bill is “extraordinarily important for our country,” urging House members “to come together and pass it.” The president said it would create millions of new “green” jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.

When I called Corker’s office earlier, I got the usual non-committal double-speak, which is not surprising given his history with the McShame gang-of-ten and their eco-nitwittery. At least Alexander and Representative Duncan would give me a firm “no” vote against any cap-and-trade bills. Oh well, that won’t stop me from calling.

Let your Senators know that they need to grow a pair and preserve what’s left of our economy.

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — Chrysler wanted to spend $134 million in advertising over the nine weeks it’s expected to be in bankruptcy — the U.S. Treasury’s auto-industry task force gave it half that.

When Obama starts believing that he is Auto Exec of the Year as he joked at the Limbaugh Lynching then their failure is completely on him. When you start telling car companies what kind of cars they can make, how much they’re allowed to advertise and how much they can charge for them then you should get fired when they collapse. Carry the same risk any other Exec does.

Any Lender knows that you’re going to shoulder the blame if you start telling your customer how to run their business. In a courtroom, you do not even want the appearance of having a hand in their business making decisions.

For a point of reference, Obama is telling Chrysler that they are only allowed to spend $67 million dollars in advertising while what was left of their image is being dragged through bankruptcy proceedings. $67 million is roughly 22% of what one Barack Obama spent advertising to become President when they’re trying to save their multi-billion dollar company, employees, shareholders, subsidiaries, etc. That 22% is quite generous too. $67 million is a much smaller percent of what Obama spent though it would be great to compare how much he spent in the last nine weeks of the campaign.

If I’m their competitor, my ad campaign starts today and ends with “Buy Your Car From A Company That’s Going To Be Around In 6 Months”. Otherwise, if you buy a car from the rats that took government money all you are doing is propping up the Union that overthrew the Board in a bloodless coup so the average dues paying member could make $75k a year and have three months of vacation to manufacture a car no one was buying in the first place.

Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The “Empowerment Experiment” is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey.

“We kind of enjoy the sacrifice because we get to make the point … but I am going without stuff and I am frustrated on a daily basis,” Maggie Anderson said. “It’s like, my people have been here 400 years and we don’t even have a Walgreens to show for it.”

But you do have a car to drive around in producing all those greenhouses gases to support a racist agenda.

Perhaps manufacturers can just start putting labels on all of their products, not unlike nutritional value, stating whether or not the product is offered by a “white company” or a “black company”. And what is a white company or a black company, anyway?

A white CEO? A black Chairman of the Board of Directors?

A 75% ratio? Only allow certain races to do certain jobs like working in the kitchen? Like the construction contractors who only hire illegal aliens for the grunt work yet never let them get that promotion that has them in a tie, in the air-conditioning and playing on the internet all day like they do?

Should all officers of the company only be one race and you should be disqualified for the position for fear of potential customers boycotting your product if they knew the awful, diverse truth?

I know there’s a name or a court case saying something about those types of practices somewhere but I can’t put my finger on it. But I attended a college with a black president so, of course, I never learned it anyway.

“We have the real power to do something, to use the money we spend every day to solve our problems,” Maggie Anderson said recently at a meet-and-greet in Atlanta. “We have to believe that black businesses are just as good as everybody else’s.”

That is exactly right except opposite. This entire experiment is an exercise in believing that black businesses are better than everyone else’s and that’s why you only want to support them.

Dallas Smith, who owns a commercial real estate firm in Atlanta, said mainstream retailers have undervalued black consumers. He lives in a black neighborhood in southwest Atlanta, where he tries to dine at black restaurants. He lamented the lack of quality businesses catering to black customers and said blacks should appreciate such businesses more.

“We’ve still got that ‘the white man’s water is colder’ mentality,” he said.

How refreshing. The water’s colder when you make the decision to segregate by choice apparently.

I do have a question though. If I find out that a business that I like is black-owned should I immediately stop frequenting it or should I take the hint when they install separate bathrooms and water fountains?

Credit default swaps are nothing but off-track betting, where one company promises to back bond payments from another. This is like Mafia protection money, only with less transparency. Allowing the gamblers to default would have been fine for our country.

When clearly insolvent companies are propped up by the government, we have a fake economy. Distrust of this manipulated market makes the usual economic metrics unreliable and creates a dangerous business landscape. Private business owners, who risk their capital and make sensible decisions, are forced to compete with inefficiently run, yet politically connected, companies.

…Not to mention the most accurate description I’ve yet heard for our blessed elected officials.

The stimulus bill, written by Democrats, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama, included a provision for AIG to pay contractually obligated bonuses of less than .01 percent of its bailout money.

After the public reacted to AIG’s bonus plan, the thespians in Congress feigned outrage. If there is anything politicians do well, it is acting angry about something they did – followed closely by pointing fingers and sidestepping issues. Shucking and jiving round out the top five.

Elected officials are that rare breed of multi-taskers who can both cause a problem and be incensed by the results. As long as 51 percent of us are dumb enough to buy it, they stay in their gerrymandered and lobbyist-dominated offices.